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I think I see a bit of blue sky out there today. Which is really nice since it poured yesterday. Maybe it was Mother Nature’s way of honoring my first art journal workshop. Personally, I would have preferred sunshine.

First of all I have to say thank you to Kelly and the Turnip Green Creative Reuse for hosting my workshop series. Kelly is warm and welcoming and so generous to this new to the art scene artist. She’s really flexible and understanding that building an audience for these workshops takes time and is really a process all it’s own. I am really grateful to them for allowing me the space to grow as I learn the best way to share my art journaling with folks. They are fantastic people and I love being part of the community.

The lovely and talented Shelly was on hand at the TGCR yesterday to help me set up. She volunteers at the TGCR and is a fantastic artist (and I’m kicking myself right now for not taking pictures of her work which is part of the current show there). If you’re in the Nashville area, go and check it out. She has several beautiful painted tile pieces that you will love! Best of all, she joined us for the workshop!

We started off by binding our journals. We used leftover posters I had from work and I showed them how to do a simple saddle stitch to bind the books. They measure 8 1/2 by 11 when completed. After we applied a layer of gesso, we set the journals aside to work on our painted magazine pages. I’ve written about this before (here) but the idea is to get paint (color) down on the pages. We used Real Simple magazine pages. You can apply acrylic paint straight to their pages (no gesso required!). The paint doesn’t slide off like it would if they were glossy pages.

They really enjoyed this step. I hear things like “this is so freeing” and “this is so much fun”. Oh and we discovered the best paint color ever – Bronze Yellow. It’s a Basic Liquitex color and we LOVE it. It blends well with everything!

While our magazine pages dried, we added the second layer of color to our journal covers. Using a few colors and a (gift card) pallet knife, we painted the backgrounds. We completed the covers by cutting out the focal elements and adding them to the covers. We used Tacky Glue.

The best part about creating in community? The conversations. Playing with paint and paper while in a group seems to naturally encourage people to open up and share their stories. Its a great way to bond and get to know someone. We had a lot of laughs, shared some of our stories and were inspired by each others work. It was a fantastic day!

Next month, we will continue in these journals with a gratitude layout. Join us at 1pm on April 26th. I’ll have journals ready for you to create in! See you then.

It’s been a productive week. I’ve been working on a few projects and checked some of my February goals off my list (yay!). Here is my visual reminder to ACT; took this yesterday while I was working on a few of those projects:

My friend, Jennifer, lent me these stamps (by Close to My Heart) and they are perfect for mixed media.

I recently found the artist, Alma Stoller, and her work with magaizne pages. In fact, I’ve started using her idea of paint anything for 10 minutes as a creative warm up. Basically, you tear out a magazine page and start painting. I use a mix of Liquitex Basic acrylic paints and fluid acrylics (Folk Art and Americana which are inexpensive and work pretty well for this). So, here are some of my creations

It’s a heck of a lot of fun! I try not to over think it and just get the paint down on the pages. I made a bunch of cards with these pages, but unfortunately, forgot to take pictures of them. I have this one, so you can get an idea of what they looked like

This is definitely a practice I am going to continue. These pages can be used in art journaling, mixed media pieces, and of course cards. So, give it a try and let me know what you think!

I don’t know about you, but I feel like 2014 is off and running! It’s been a busy week at Studio B. I chose my one little word for 2014 (drum roll please)…. ACT. Three little letters with big meaning:

1 a: the doing of a thing : deed

b: something done voluntarily

2: a state of real existence rather than possibility

3: the process of doing : action

For me, the reminder to ACT will be the reminder that spending time working on my creative endevors daily will allow me to acheive my goal of becoming a full time artist. In fact, doing something, even if it’s only for 10 minutes each day, is the only way it will become a reality. So, my first ACT this year to incororate using my one word was to create this January goal card.

front of “Act” card

back of “Act” card

Nothing fancy, but that really wasn’t the point. The important thing was that I got it done.

The other project I’ve been working on this week is hand made cards. Starting with left over event posters from work, the first layer is (of course) gesso.

Next comes the fun part; adding acrylic paint with a pallet knife. I use Liquitex Basic and Heavey Bodied acrylic paints and spread the color out with my pallet knife until I’m happy with it.

I use some of these sheets for background and some for the focal elements. I draw the flowers with Winsor & Newton drawing ink and seal it with a spray acrylic.

flower elements

I cut the backgrounds down to fit my cards and cut out all the flowers (which takes a while).

I use soft gel medium to adhere the flowers to the background. After allowing the gel medium to dry, I drew the stems.

and finally, I attach them to the card.

This set is for my personal use. I’m also working on some cards to take to Atmalogy (over on West End).

I’d love to hear what you think of my cards! Please share your adventures with your One Little Word as well!
Till next week,
Cheers,
Michelle

And before you ask, I mean rubbing alcohol, not the drinking kind! It’s been nice to finally get back in my art room and be free to create again. Between work and home renovations, I haven’t been able to paint in about 3 weeks. Way too long! So it was really nice this weekend to have the chance to work on multiple pieces (cause ya know, I have no patience for anything to dry!)

A good friend was kind enough to give me this:

I just love the size and shape of this mag! I decided to make it into another journal. Naturally, I started with the cover (and if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you may recall I used these figures in my crayon wrapper layout recently – and thank you for sticking with me!)

I wasn’t sure what to do for the cover, but I remembered a YouTube video that shared a technique using rubbing alcohol and acrylic paints (the link is at the end of the post).

Next is the fun part! I used an eye dropper to drip the alcohol (it was recommended to use 91% Isopropyl) onto my page. It was really cool to see the paint separate and form these free forms. Unfortunately I had to wait for this to dry (see how having multiple projects comes in handy!)

For the second layer, I went with a silvery gray (I don’t recall what I mixed) and repeated the process. I have to say, I was pretty pleased!

A little more gesso to highlight the areas I wanted to draw on…..

I’ve been really having fun with flowers lately so it seemed like the right thing to do.

My cover is complete. I will share this tip with you: have patience and let your hand drawn with drawing ink image dry completely before you try to use soft gel adhesive. Or you will end up smearing your sweet little butterfly like I did and have to go back once the adhesive really dries and draw it again.

Have you ever tried using alcohol and acrylics? Did you have fun? I’d love to hear about it. Hope you like this week’s creation. See you next Saturday!